Kids
by Everything and More
Summary: Post Iron Man3: AU in which Harley's mom didn't survive the Extremis attack in his hometown and he and his sister get adopted by Tony and Pepper.
1. Home

**A/N: Didn't write a fanfiction in a while. This was a small story written in only five minutes that popped up in my mind after watching Iron Man 3. Hope you like it. Enjoy!**

The Stark Mansion on 10880 Malibu Point had been rebuild almost exactly the same as it was before the Mandarin attack, except for the Iron Men storage that used to be under the house and the two extra bedrooms that were build in this time. In the first one a little girl was already vast asleep, dreaming about unicorns and Hello, Kitty. In the other bedroom, a man and a woman were watching a young boy drift off to sleep.

"Isn't he cute?" Pepper lay down her head on Tony's shoulder as they watched the boy together.

"Yes, very cute now he's asleep, but very annoying when he's awake." Tony answered as he took Pepper's hand and led her out of the room.

"Annoying? Oh come on! You love the boy hanging around you all the time."

"No. No I don't." Both of them knew that wasn't true. Tony did love having the boy around. Harley was a smart ass kid and reminded Tony a bit of himself. They had build a couple of toys together, and Tony had been a bit jealous of the ones Harley had made all by himself. That boy had a great mind.

Pepper snorted. "Yeah, right. Remember the day we adopted him and Sophie?"

Of course he did. How could he not. He might not admit it, but it had been one of the best days of his life.

* * *

The workers had only been busy rebuilding the house for two days when the police car drove towards the mansion. Pepper noticed it first and gave Tony a nudge. "Tony, look."

As the police officer came out of the car, Tony slowly walked towards him.

"Mr. Stark?"

"Yeah, that's me." Tony answered. "Can I help you, officer?"

The officer made a quick look at the car before turning to Tony. "I have two orphan kids with me who want to talk to you."

That didn't seem right, two kids who wanted to talk to him and the police giving them an escort. "Why? Why me?"

"Well, the oldest said he's a friend of yours." The officer turned back to the car and gave a small nod.

The car door opened and a boy came out of the car, followed by a younger girl. The girl clutched a teddy bear to her chest as the boy took her free hand and led her to them.

"Harley." Tony said.

"Hey Tony." The boy answered cheerful.

"Wait, you two know each other?" Pepper had walked up beside Tony as she had seen the two kids coming out of the car.

"Yeah. We do. Harley here is my friend from Tennessee. He helped with my suit and the investigation on those Extremis explosions." Tony knelt on one knee so he and the boy were on the same height. "It's good to see you again, kid, but what are you doing here?"

Harley smiled. "It's good to see you too, Tony, and this is what you get for leaving me behind."

Tony sighed. "I knew I was going to regret that more than I would leaving you behind. Why did you bring them here?" he said as he looked up at the police officer.

"I was actually going to take them to an orphanage, but the boy asked me for a detour to your mansion."

"An orphanage?" Tony remembered the boy had said he lived with his mother, and that his father had left them years ago, then when did they – "The Extremis attack? Your mom died in there?"

Harley nodded.

During the Extremis attack in Tennessee a couple of people had become injured, but only a few had actually died. Tony knew that, and he hadn't really forgiven himself for all that had happened yet.

He looked at the little girl with the teddy bear in her hand. She looked back at him with big eyes."And what about your dad?"

"Apparently he died in a car accident two years ago. He didn't win the lottery." Harley sounded indifferent. The boy hadn't seen his father for six years, but Tony knew the news hadn't hurt Harley any less because of it and that he tried to stay strong now.

"Sorry to hear it, kid." He looked back at the officer. "What's the real reason you're here?" Tony was almost sure he already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from the mouth of the officer.

"They want you to adopt them."

Tony looked from the officer to the two kids. "Nope. Can't do."

Harley stared at him. "Tony, please?"

Tony ignored his plead as best as he could. "Don't they have some other family member they can go to, officer Mako-? Makov-? Makovithingy?" He had trouble reading the name from the tag.

"Makovski." The officer corrected with annoyance. "And no, their mother was all they had left, so I'm afraid not."

"Well, then, I'm sorry that I can't help you." Tony looked at Harley, who was looking back at him with sadness in his eyes. And something else. Determination. Tony grinned in himself. He had to give that boy something, he was as stubborn as a donkey.

"Tony?" Pepper said softly while putting a hand on his arm. "Can I talk to you for a moment?"

She led him a couple of meters away from the officer and the kids. "Why did you say no?"

"Because I don't want two little, annoying kids running around in my mansion. I have you, and that's enough sometimes. Besides, we're wrecks. We have bad nights, anxiety attacks, kids won't help to fix that, would they?"

Pepper looked him straight in the eyes and he saw the same determination he saw in Harley's. He wasn't going to win this, he knew it, but he wasn't the man to admit that so easily either.

"They won't make us worse either. Tony, just imagine it, having kids. Don't you want a family?"

"You're my family, Pepper. I love you."

"I know, but that's not what I meant. Come on, Tony, look at them. How can you say no?"

Tony did look at them. The girl had hit her face in the fluffy fur of her toy, but the boy was still looking at him.

He sighed and looked back at Pepper. "Fine," Pepper started to cheer. "But you'll be the mother."

Pepper looked at him in confusion, as if that hadn't been obvious, but Tony had already turned his back to her and walked back to the trio.

"Well, officer Makovski, I hope you have some adoption files with you, because Ms. Potts and I'd like to adopt Harley and –" He looked at the girl and realized he didn't even know her name.

"Sophie." Harley said quickly.

"- and little Sophie as our kids." Tony finished.

The officer gave a faint smirk and told him to wait a moment as he went to get the files. Tony looked at the boy, whose sadness had disappeared and had changed to happiness.

"Welcome home, kid."


	2. Shopping with Sophie

**A/N: Wrote this during my break from revising for my exams. Thank you for the idea, WhatTheValhalla, and I apologize it didn't become every shop in America ;) Also, Sophie somehow made me think of Agnes from Despicable Me and it might show in my writing. Hope you guys enjoy!**

The kids adjusted very easily to their new home. Harley followed Tony almost everywhere to overload him with questions about Jarvis, the robots and the now-gone Iron Man suits, and little Sophie enjoyed dressing up the robots so much they were now all wearing pink tutus. Pepper would watch and laugh and sometimes she, to Tony's frustration, would even join Sophie.

Now and then Sophie would drop everything and start silently crying. At first they thought it was because of the loss of her mother, but soon they found out that it wasn't the only reason. After a long chat which was almost incomprehensible because Sophie kept sobbing while talking, Tony figured she had lost something very precious to her; a limited-edition Dora watch. Tony explained to her that he had borrowed it after his crash landing and that a bad guy broke it. The news that it was broken didn't land very well and Pepper made him promise the girl he was going to get her a new, limited-edition Dora watch.

From then it happened Sophie would keep asking Tony about the watch. In ten minutes, she would ask the questions as many times as possible and Tony kept answering 'No', or 'Not yet', before she left to dress up the robots again.

Then one day, she didn't leave after ten minutes and put up big puppy eyes instead.

Tony looked at her and refused at first, but as she kept standing there he finally agreed to take her shopping for a new watch,

"Well, have fun with the kids, Tony." Pepper gave him a kiss, but Tony was too perplexed to kiss her back.

"What do you mean 'have fun'? You're not coming?"

"Oh, Tony, I can't, remember? Natalie is coming over."

"Natalie?"

"Yeah, you know, the woman who was my personal assistant when you made me CEO of Stark Industries, who later appeared to –"

"be Natasha Romanoff, undercover agent for S.H.I.E.L.D.. I remember her, yeah. We worked together in New York." Tony had almost forgotten his Avengers team member was still a good friend of Pepper. "Are you sure that's today?"

"Yes, Tony." Tony wanted to protest, tell her that he couldn't go shopping with the kids alone and that they would have to postpone the shopping to a day when Pepper would be able to join them, but she stopped him and he knew it was a lost cause. "Just go."

"Okay, fine, you go have fun with Natasha, but don't go pretending it was my fault you had to miss all the fun we are going to have." When she wasn't coming, than why not at least make her feel a bit guilty. "Harley, you coming?"

Harley looked up from the game he was playing. "I'm not coming. You don't know how exhausting shopping with Sophie is."

Tony did have a slight idea how exhausting it was going to be and wanted to say that, but again Pepper stopped him. "It's fine, he can stay. He won't be much of a bother to us, and I believe Nat was taking her boyfriend with her, so…"

Tony would ask her who this guy actually was if it wasn't for Sophie, who really wanted to leave, so he left it with that.

* * *

Tony took Sophie to the nearest mall, where the little girl ran around with joy, almost forgetting the reason why they were actually there. Tony asked the cashiers of every jewelry store in the mall about the watch, and he got the same answer every time. "I'm sorry, sir, but it was a limited-edition watch from Christmas. You'll be lucky if you can find one store in America that still has one."

He told Sophie they were most likely not going to find the watch, and she looked at him with big, hopeful eyes. "Can we go to the next mall to see if they have it?"

"No. Didn't you just hear me? They're most likely gone. All of them."

"You said most likely, so there's still a chance someone has one."

"Aren't you clever? Fine, we'll go." Even though Tony was already tired from running after her when she found something else pretty, he had to give it to her; she didn't give up quickly, and it made him sort of proud.

Luckily there are loads of malls in California and the next one was only a forty minute drive away, mostly because they got stuck in traffic for half of the time. In those twenty minutes, Sophie got as far to get Tony singing along with her, so the drive didn't feel that long.

There, Sophie ran from store to store to ask them if they had her Dora watch, but sadly none of the stores in this mall had it either. Sophie was able to persuade Tony to drive to the next mall, where Sophie got distracted after half an hour by a huge, fluffy unicorn.

"Can I keep it?" Sophie asked excitedly.

"No."

"Please?" She put up the puppy eyes that had make her win that morning.

"No. Stop it. That's not going to work."

"But what if we don't find my Dora watch?" She made herself look really sad, but Tony didn't fall for that.

"If we don't find your watch we can always go back to buy you this unicorn."

"But what if he's already gone then, like my watch?"

"Then you'll probably find something else to obsess about."

"But I don't want something else. I want this unicorn."

"The answer is still no. Come on, let's go back to searching for your watch." He walked away and heard a sobbing sound after a couple seconds. He turned back around and saw Sophie sitting on the ground, crying and with the unicorn on her lap.

A couple of passers-by watched the little girl and an older woman walked towards her to ask her what was wrong.

Tony sighed. He now understood more than ever why Harley didn't want to come with them. He also realized how stubborn both kids were and that it was probably going to cause more trouble over the years.

As he walked back to the girl he saw the woman watching him and he knew she was going to start a discussion with him. "Sophie?" he asked carefully when he was close enough.

"Are you this girl's father?" The woman stood up and looked angry. Very angry.

"You could say that, yes."

"This girl here is very miserable because you don't want to give her the toy."

"That's because –"

"Because you're a bad parent."

"Excuse me?"

"Fathers should give their kids a toy once in a while, and you don't even want to give her this little thing? You are –" Tony stopped listening to what the woman had to say to him and realized he was going to have to buy that unicorn sooner or later to get away from her. He preferred sooner.

"Yeah, yeah, okay, fine. Sophie, you can keep the unicorn." He said before turning to the woman. "Now if you please stop lecturing me, ma'am, I can go pay for it and continue shopping with my daughter." He walked away before she could say another word.

Sadly they couldn't find the watch in one of the other stores in that mall. Sophie, still eager to find the thing, tried to make Tony drive to another mall, but Tony'd had enough. As she was about to start crying again, he made a promise he was going to make JARVIS search for it on the internet. She agreed to that and they went driving back home, only stopping once to eat dinner.

It was past Sophie's bedtime when they arrived back home, as dinner had took them longer than expected – Sophie had run off after a balloon she had gotten and it took Tony an hour to find her in the top of a tree trying to get it back – and therefore Sophie had fallen asleep in the car.

When Tony carried the girl, and her unicorn, back inside the house, Pepper came storming towards them. "Where have you been? Don't you know what time it is? What's that?"

"We've been shopping although California, I know what time it is and you have to blame Sophie for it, and that's a unicorn." Tony walked past her and went up the stairs, Pepper following in his trail.

"You gave her a unicorn? And what about the watch?"

"Limited-edition. Almost impossible to find. JARVIS?"

"Yes, sir?" The system asked.

"Make sure to make a full scan on stores that have a limited-edition Dora watch. I want the results first thing tomorrow."

"Will do, sir."

"So you're still going to get her the watch?" Pepper asked. Tony lay the girl in her bed and Pepper helped him tuck her in.

"Of course." Tony walked into the hall, but turned back a second. "Oh, and Pepper, next time you go shopping with her."


End file.
